hi everyone thank you for listening i'm naveena a phd student at the university of washington
i'm presenting our paper on health information quality and social media in india
i co-authored this paper with richard anderson
there's been a proliferation of information related to health and well-being on social media
recent conversations have increasingly centered on the intersection of health information
and political and cultural contexts and how they must be understood in relation to one another
for example we see the rise of conspiracy theories or hostility towards public health guidelines in
light of mistrust in government institutions or scientific elites so as social media platforms
are adopted across the world we must understand the issue of information quality by account
by accounting for varying health systems and beliefs around health levels of institutional
capture and reinforcement of misinformation and uptake of smartphones and mobile internet
our paper contributes to this conversation by asking how do people assess use and share
health information on social media in rural and urban contexts in south india
in this context plural systems of health coexist with prevalence of both allopathic and traditional
medicine and integration into public health systems there is also increasing access to online
spaces but with diverse literacies and varying levels of safety for marginalized identities
including women there has also been increasingly divisive ethno-nationalist politics with the
current government utilizing numerous tactics to promote a hindu nation state a tactic relevant
to this work is promoting ayurveda in particular a traditional medicine system rooted in hinduism
to present our findings and discussion we utilize the lens of tools for conviviality as proposed by
ivan illich in his critique of modern tools and institutions such as healthcare he argues that
they have become overly specialized and profit-oriented
and detriment to people's ability to care for themselves and one another
he proposed convivial tools as those that support autonomous and creative intercourse among persons
in contrast to tools that seek to coerce control or induce dependency we thus use this lens to
unpack participants personal goals when navigating health information versus the impositional values
of health misinformation and information sharing practices that they encountered
to answer our research question we conducted 28 semi-structured interviews over phone
with participants across urban and rural locations in the south indian states of andhra pradesh and
telangana participants ranged from low to middle income and had a range of occupations
including community health workers who were integral to information flows in the rural context
all participants were hindu and this shaped the health systems and beliefs that they subscribed to
we also analyzed a total of 20 posts related to health that participants had recently encountered
now provide a brief summary of our findings starting with what participants felt that they got
out of health information on social media through posts about home remedies or healthy lifestyle
changes participants found accessible and familiar forms of care to supplement knowledge and material
gaps during the start of the kova 19 pandemic for example home remedies were made with easily found
ingredients and posts about boosting immunity at the start of the pandemic were more accessible
than other advice such as procuring masks given the lack of availability in the village
in their information sharing practices participants aim to
share useful and credible information while being sensitive to diverse health practices
for example some participants avoided sharing overtly or religious posts about ayurvedic
remedies and large group chats so as to not impose upon people who practice different religions we
also discuss the role of community health workers and social media content creation by locals in
supporting awareness of public health guidelines and sense making within the rural context
at the same time there were numerous instances where misinformation or information sharing
practices served to commodify or discipline care in comparison to posts that suggested
home remedies as complementary to public health guidelines other posts lionized home remedies as
covet 19 cures other content commodified ayurveda or marketed unverified health products directly
to consumers we also found that ashas needed to confront impacts of disinformation circulating
heavily at the start of the pandemic about muslims as purposeful spreaders of covet 19. this required
them to balance addressing misinformation with carefully navigating community relationships and
the precarity of their positions as workers at the bottom of the healthcare hierarchy we also found
that especially for new smartphone or whatsapp users indiscriminately forwarding information was
tied to social status as sources of information inverting information as a means into an end
we found that participants used a number of tactics to respond to misinformation and people
who shared it participants fairly variously used indirect and direct ways to cast doubt
on misinformation for example simply questioning where a post was from or more directly providing
counter evidence we also found that participants used offline spaces to assess or confront
misinformation for more meaningful or private conversations this was in part shaped by gender
roles that some women participants discussed such as r3 who explained that she would likely
not directly say anything about misinformation to men in online spaces preferring women only spaces
participants also described how learning about media literacy and responsible sharing practices
was a social process with advice from friends news about the impacts of misinformation and debates
and moderation in group chats being integral to working towards healthier online spaces
drawing on these findings we discuss how we can support the ways that social media was a convivial
tool but also how we can address the challenges of misinformation that individual efforts do not
entirely resolve we first discuss what we learned about the changing landscape of online health
information as smartphone and mobile internet penetration increases for for example noting
increased local content creation and how this might shape understandings of community health
we also expand understandings of media literacy beyond the individual and notions of veracity
pointing out the ways that literacy is not just about evaluating pieces of information
but about considering its broad impact in everyday lives depending on positionality
community roles and meanings of technology adoption
finally we draw on religious provocation that the concentration of power within tools must
be limited in order to support conviviality drawing on our findings and examples of health
misinformation promoted by the indian government itself and social media platforms in action and
addressing health misinformation we motivate a turn towards alternative models of ownership of
social media community-based methods of moderation in local languages and addressing critical
media literacy and safety of marginalized communities online thank you for listening
and if you'd like to get in touch about this paper or collaborations please reach out